On Friday, my elementary school kids had a lockdown. Not a drill. A real one that lasted hours because three armed men were loose in our suburban neighborhood.

Before the police clarified that the threat was external to the school, my kids hunched against cubbies, tucked into the corners of their classrooms, playing the quiet game. They squeezed their legs together so they wouldn’t wet themselves—no bathroom, no water, no recess. No chance to just be kids.

I was working at home, seeing patients, when the alerts came: gunmen on the loose, shelter in place. Seconds later: my kids’ school was on lockdown. All schools in the area were on lockdown. My stomach dropped. Helicopters rattled the windows. I set the alarm and hid in my office.

I thought about canceling patients. I didn’t know what to do. Where is the guidebook for: gunmen loose in your neighborhood?

Fortunately, the FBI and local police did an outstanding job and no one was injured.

When my children finally stepped off the bus that afternoon, I felt like I had won the lottery. Their smiles were perfect, their faces alive. My tears were fierce, immediate.

And then I thought: so many parents never get this moment. So many send their kids to school in America and never welcome them home again.

Why? How have we allowed this to become normal?

My mom died of esophageal cancer when my kids were 4 and 6. Her decline was swift—six months from caretaker to skeleton. They adored her, and I wanted to shield them, to pretend the world was softer than it is. But her death robbed me of that choice.

I’ll never forget telling my son she was gone. “No,” he cried, “you’re kidding, right?” I wanted so badly to be kidding. Instead, we walked through grief together. No sheltering, no pretending. Only truth, only pain, only the long road forward.

That’s how I parent now. Not perfectly, but honestly. I tell my kids the truth: sometimes life is beautiful, sometimes it’s unfair, sometimes it’s terrifying. And sometimes the adult world seeps into theirs, whether I want it to or not.

So we spent the weekend talking about the lockdown. Watching clips, processing, naming the fear. On Monday, as they climbed the bus steps, my stomach twisted again: God, please don’t let there be another lockdown today. Please don’t let this be the last time I see them.

This is the reality we live in. And I hate it.

When I asked my kids if they talked about the lockdown at school, they said no. Just another normal day.

But isn’t that part of the problem?

It is not normal for children to hide from gunmen.
It is not normal for a six-year-old to understand the words: This is not a drill.
It is not normal for parents to argue about district protocols instead of asking why we accept this reality at all.

My daughter told me, “Mom, the boy next to me kept crying because it was his first lockdown. But I’d had one before, so I knew what to do.”

Every child should be allowed to cry during a lockdown. Every parent should grieve that our children have to hide at all.

Minimizing it doesn’t protect them. Silence doesn’t heal them. In fact, isn’t the more traumatic thing to act like it didn’t happen? Doesn’t silence teach them that fear is shameful? When in fact, being scared is the most normal (read: human) reaction children can have to this abnormal situation.

Eckhart Tolle says: Don’t confuse opinion with identity.

We’ve become so polarized—guns, politics, rights—that we forget what unites us. Beneath our opinions, we are human. We all know fear. We all know loss.

Violence doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It is taught, inherited, born from trauma and desperation. And yet, we cling to opinions as if they define us. They don’t. Who we are is not a stance. Who we are is love. Generosity. Goodness.

If we want to help our children, we have to find our way back to common ground.

I don’t know the exact solution. But I know this: pretending isn’t working. Silence isn’t working. Numbing ourselves with Instagram, TikTok, or Netflix isn’t working.

Our kids are watching. They absorb more from what we do than what we say. If we teach them that hiding and moving on is normal, then normal it will become.

But if we teach them that fear deserves a voice, that grief deserves space, that compassion matters more than opinions—then maybe we plant the seeds of change.

Because the opposite of pretending it’s normal isn’t despair. The opposite is courage.

And courage is exactly what this generation deserves.

So what does that mean for me? It means I listen to the inner voice that screams: This isn’t normal. It means I speak up, even when I’d rather stay silent. It means I put down my phone and spend more time in nature with my kids. It means I try to engage less with outrageous news and more with shared humanity. To see every person—the librarian, the mail carrier, even the stranger whose choices terrify me—as human.

Broken, like me.

Because our kids are watching.

And it’s time to act with love.